In the 1800s early oil wildcatters devised all sorts of techniques
for getting reservoirs to give up their bounty. Civil War veteran Col.
Edward Roberts invented something called the Petroleum Torpedo, which basically consisted of placing a long cylinder filled with nitroglycerin down a well and exploding it. Later came the Downhole Bazooka. Along the way a few people died when nitroglycerin plants exploded and burned down. But that was a small price to pay for bringing in a gusher.
In 1949 Earle P. Halliburton HAL +2.28%
figured out a better way to stimulate stubborn oil reservoirs — using
high pressure water instead of nitroglycerin. At an oil well outside of
Norman, Okla. he conducted the first commercial hydraulic fracturing job. Since then the industry has fracked more than 1 million oil and gas wells.
Most of the action went unnoticed and unappreciated by the average
American, because the oil fields tended to be far enough away from
cities and suburbs that nobody was around to care. That all changed in the early 2000s with the adoption of horizontal
drilling. Suddenly geologists were finding recoverable oil and gas all
over the place. Only when drilling moved in from the countryside into
the suburbs did people really start to worry about how it was done.
Now maybe they can stop worrying so much. Today the Environmental Protection Agency released the findings of its four-year investigation into
hydraulic fracturing. The EPA concluded that there exists no evidence
fracking has had any “widespread, systemic impact on drinking water.”
The EPA study looked beyond just drilling activities at all the
mechanisms by which fracking could impact the water cycle, including
withdrawals of water for use in fracking, spills of fracking fluids and
produced water, the potential for underground migration of liquids and
gases, and the treatment and discharge of wastewater.
The EPA says that among those mechanisms it found “specific
instances” that “led to impacts on drinking water resources, including
contamination of drinking water wells. The number of identified cases,
however, was small compared to the number of hydraulically fractured
wells.”
These days the average well is shot with more than 3 million gallons
of water laden with about 9,000 gallons of chemicals. The EPA explains
that the riskiest part of the fracking process involves moving those
chemicals and getting them ready to be mixed with the fracking water.
The EPA looked at spills that occurred between 2006 and 2012 and found
that assuming 25,000 to 30,000 new wells fracked each year, we can
expect as many as 3,700 spills, with a median spill volume of 420
gallons.
It’s never ok for spills and accidents to happen. But they do. Then
they get cleaned up and life goes on. Surface spills should be
relatively easy to remediate. Harder to handle are underground
incidents. The EPA mentions several of these. One time some fracking
fluid spilled into a Kentucky creek. Near Killdeer, North Dakota a
string of casing inside a well burst during fracking and spilled fluid
onto the surface and possibly into a water aquifer. In Bainbridge, Ohio
an inadequately cemented cased allowed gas to pollute a drinking water
aquifer. Something similar happened in the Mamm Creek gas field in
Colorado.
The report explains that all of these accidents are avoidable with
the application of proper drilling and casing techniques. And the agency
rightly explains that a small number of accidents must be taken in the
context of a massive industry.
In North Dakota’s Bakken. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown, File)
But that won’t satisfy the fractivists. They rail against shale
drilling, coal mining and all fossil fuels. They don’t even like
zero-carbon nuclear. They believe in a world powered solely by wind
turbines and solar panels. It would be just as realistic for us all to
trade in our cars for unicorns.
“Today EPA confirmed what communities living
with fracking have known for years, fracking pollutes drinking water,”
said Earthworks Policy
Director Lauren Pagel in an emailed statement. “Now the Obama
administration, Congress, and state governments must act on that
information to protect our drinking water, and stop perpetuating the oil
and gas industry’s myth that fracking is safe.”
On Polluterwatch.com, they say that pressure from oil and gas companies “crippled”
the EPA’s efforts. No doubt oil and gas companies will be relieved that
the EPA does not appear to be laying the groundwork for any kind of
federal-level regulation of drilling.
Hate the oil and gas industry all you want, but the drilling boom has
done great things for this country. A decade ago we faced the prospect
of having to import vast amounts of natural gas from the Middle East.
Now we have so much gas that we’ll soon start exporting it. The savings
for the country from that is massive. As I wrote three years ago in “ The Arithmetic of Shale Gas”
Americans are saving more than $100 billion a year thanks to cheap
natural gas. That’s $100 billion a year that stays in this country to
spur jobs and create an industrial rennaissance, rather than gets sent
overseas. And that $100 billion only represents the lower cost of gas.
The follow-on multiplier effect is far greater.
Our economy and way of life are built on oil and gas. We use 20
million barrels of oil and roughly 80 billion cubic feet of gas every
day to run our cars, make electricty, and as a feedstock for myriad
plastics and chemicals, fertilizers and pharmaceuticals. When you’re
dealing with such enormous volumes, spills will happen. And when they do
the companies that caused them must be held responsible. But the EPA
study makes it very clear that when fracking is done in the right way it
can be done safely.
Gone are the days of the Petroleum Torpedo and Downhole Bazooka.
Spills will get cleaned up. Landowners compensated. And drilling
techniques will only get better and safer and cleaner. It’s heartening
that the EPA appreciates that.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2015/06/04/the-epa-says-we-can-stop-worrying-about-fracking-now/2/?ss=energy